Feng Chong

Lotus Peak stood towering amid the clouds, its bones carved from jade and its robes cut from mist.

At the summit, Green Cloud Palace rose with upturned eaves, like an immortal wielding a brush to paint upon sheer gray cliffs. Before it lay a massive boulder, its cracked veins resembling a thousand-petaled lotus in bloom. At dawn and dusk, rosy glow soaked into it, making it seem like a crimson jade cup dropped into the mortal world by a heavenly maiden.

The mountain ridge wound like a dragon's spine, with bottomless cliffs on either side. When the wind passed through, the pines moaned like flutes, and one could faintly hear the echoes of Chenxiang's axe when he split the mountain to save his mother.

Cloud and mist surged up from beneath Sacrifice Cliff, sometimes winding around the mountain waist like white silk, sometimes scattering like shattered jade into the deep ravines, staining the jagged rocks into an ink-wash landscape.

Most wondrous of all was the moment when the setting sun melted into gold. Its last rays turned the lotus-shaped boulder crimson gold, reflecting one another with the gleam upon Green Cloud Palace's glazed tiles.

Standing upon the summit at that moment, with the sea of clouds churning beneath one's feet like boiling water, one could almost feel that one was no longer a mortal traveler, but an exiled immortal treading lotus flowers through the void.

Yet this sacred immortal ground had been defiled.

Vulgarity. Gaudy gold-and-red carpets and pavilions; heavily made-up men; the harsh reek of wine.

"Dongfang Sheng." Feng Qingyang was horrified.

The gloom on his face deepened as he recognized the newcomer.

Not merely because of this old acquaintance's bizarre, neither-male-nor-female appearance, nor because Green Cloud Palace, a place so full of memories, had been desecrated.

It was